Best known for their 1978 Top 20 hit Top Of The Pops, The Rezillos were like Scottish cousins of The B-52s, Edinburgh art students who brought a dayglo trash-pop aesthetic to new wave.
Rebranding themselves The Revillos for legal reasons, they disbanded in the mid-1980s and pursued other careers. Singer Fay Fife (aka Sheilagh Hynd) studied acting, landing roles in Taggart and The Bill, then retrained as a clinical psychologist. Guitarist Eugene Reynolds (aka Alan Forbes) launched a motorcycle import business.
But they reunited in 2001, and Zero is their first new album since 1978. Little has changed in their schlocky-horror junk-shop aesthetic, with wilfully dumb riff-jerkers like The Groovy Room and Spike Heel Assassin sounding agreeably goofy but pretty disposable.
However, the polished and emotive power-pop chuggers She’s The Bad One and Sorry About Tomorrow show more midlife maturity, recasting Fife as a Scottish Debbie Harry./o:p
